BERLIN (AP) – Germany’s main national history museum is exploring six decades of immigration into the country, from the arrival of the first southern European guest workers to today’s migrant influx from the Arab world and elsewhere.
The exhibition at Berlin’s German Historical Museum is titled “Multicultural: Germany, a country of immigration” and tells a story of often-ambivalent but evolving attitudes.
The show opens Saturday. It starts with West Germany’s recruitment of guest workers from 1955 to help boost economic reconstruction. It ends with present-day Syrian and Iraqi refugees.
Hans Huetter, head of the Bonn-based museum of post-war German history that produced the exhibition, says it shows “Germany is a country of immigration, even if political leaders for a long time didn’t say that or perhaps didn’t want to know it.”